Dems proudly unveil new Capitol statue that replaced Robert E. Lee

Democrats have unveiled the statue that has taken the place of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s, which was removed several years ago.

Senator Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, triumphantly posted a video of the removal on his X account, recalling the exact date and time that the General Lee statue was taken down. The replacement is a statue of Barbara Rose Johns, who was just 16 years old at the time she protested the abysmal conditions she and her fellow classmates were forced to endure at their segregated school in Virginia.

Watch:

“At 4:30am on a night in December 2020, I recorded the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from the U.S. Capitol. Today, he’ll be replaced by Barbara Rose Johns, who led a protest of conditions in her all-Black school in Farmville that eventually helped end segregation in America,” the lawmaker wrote.

See the new statue:

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Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was also present at the unveiling, alongside Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s congressional delegation and more than 200 members of the Johns family, according to Johnson.

“We are here to honor one of America’s true trailblazers, a woman who embodied the essence of the American spirit in her fight for liberty and justice and equal treatment under the law, the indomitable Barbara Rose Johns,” the speaker said.

“Johns was 16 years old in 1951 when she led a student strike for equal education at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The students’ cause gained the support of NAACP lawyers, who filed a lawsuit that would become one of the five cases that the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed in Brown v. Board of Education. The high court’s landmark 1954 decision declared “separate but equal” public schools unconstitutional,” NBC News reported.

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Sierra Marlee

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